The Writer Who Turned a Crime into a Noble Art

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The ennoblement of capoeira is read as a natural rise in status. The thesis shows it was authored — Coelho Netto and the intellectual elite deliberately reworking the image of a criminalised game.

An image reworked

Coelho Netto transformed the image of capoeira: from a popular, crapulous practice, it became a noble activity. The move rested on the claimed morality, intelligence and sense of honour of its practitioners, and on the list of eminent figures said to have practised it — men who made careers in politics, teaching, the army and the navy.

The elite's role

The episode illustrates the significant place of the intellectual elite within the Brazilian art — the more so given its role in favour of the abolition of slavery. To ennoble capoeira was to enlist it in a respectable national narrative, distancing it from the maltas and the street.

Why it matters

The 'nobility' of capoeira was not discovered but constructed, by writers with an interest in respectability. The art's dignity has an author and a date, like its criminalisation.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part I: Coelho Netto and the ennoblement of capoeira)

IN THE CORPUS

→ When Capoeira Meant Gangs, Not Grace

→ The Law That Banned Capoeira Set It Free to Become a Game

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Writer Who Turned a Crime into a Noble Art. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 105. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-writer-who-turned-a-crime-into-a-noble-art. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.